Son of the Earl of Brentford, and brother of Lady Laura Standish. Violent in temper and undisciplined in conduct, tarred with a reputation for wildness that he did nothing to refute, he was sent down from Oxford for good cause, and devoted his time almost equally between gambling at cards and the Newmarket races.

He squandered the whole of Lady Laura’s fortune, and was refused by Violet Effingham, although she loved him dearly. He and Phineas Finn had a duel because of Violet, who finally decided to marry him to reform him. The marriage was a happy one, and they retired to a small country place where Lord Chiltern expended his energies in acting as Master of the Hounds for the Brake Hunt, and became a model country gentleman.

"Lord Chiltern was a red man, and that peculiarity of his personal appearance was certainly the first to strike a stranger. It imparted a certain look of ferocity to him.... His beard was red, and was clipped, so as to have none of the softness of waving hair. The hair on his head also was kept short, and was very red,-and the colour of his face was red. Nevertheless he was a handsome man, with well-cut features, not tall, but very strongly built, and with a certain curl in the corner of his eyelids which gave him a look of resolution - which perhaps he did not possess. He was known to he a clever man, and when very young had had the reputation of being a scholar" - Phineas Finn